San Bernardino County firefighters testing water-dropping drones

San Bernardino firefighters may soon have a new weapon against California wildfires: autonomous water-dropping drones.

While the San Bernardino County Fire currently uses drones to spot fires, its robotics division is working with the company Ponderosa to develop the Fire Sparrow Mark 10.

"The benefit of water-dropping dones is their reflex time, their ability to be in the air within seconds," SB County Fire spokesperson Eric Sherwin said. 

The Fire Sparrow is still in development, but Sherwin said the current iteration can carry 10 gallons of water, which can be trickled along a fire line or dumped in a single spot to put out an emerging fire. 

"Each firefighter can do more with technology, and that's, I think, the hope in what we're doing," said Ryo Chijiiwa, founder and CEO of Ponderosa.

Chijiiwa said the goal is to create a fully autonomous model before creating an entire fleet that can work together and communicate in the air with helicopters. 

"Realistically, it might take more than a couple of years, but the long-term vision is to have these drones in docking stations, pre-positioned in areas of high risk," Chijiiwa said. "We want to make it cost-effective enough that it could be in someone's backyard."

Ponderosa and San Bernardino County Fire hope they can develop the Fire Sparrow Mark 10 into a tool that can help save property and lives during wildfires. 

"The whole goal of water-dropping drones for county fire is to fill that space between the time the fire starts and firefighters ultimately arrive on scene," Sherwin said.